branching, tagging and merging are foundamental concepts of the SVN operativity. For their means I redirect you to the Chapter 4 in the SVN book.

Here we will discuss the merging operativity. The case presented is the one in which I would like to merge (align) the latest fixes/development in the trunk in a specific branch (say 2.2).

What I like to do is download a new project, as said in the preceding post, but pointing to the desired branch instead of the trunk. Then when asked, specify a different project name, in order to avoid naming conflicts.

When done, on the root of the branch project, select with a right click the Team->Merge.

Now in the URL field specify the url of the source from which you would like to take the latest version. Then in the Start Revision specify the version from which you would like to start search for editing and in Stop Revision specify the version to stop for searches. Generally the last one is the number beside the trunk project in the repository (if you want to align to the latest version). Here is how the form should end up after compilation.

Before proceeding I prefer take a quick preview with the suitable button. When assured that everything is ok, click on the OK button and wait for the end of the process.

When process complete it should be safe to give a Commit of everything but maybe it’s better to give a full recompile and a full test 🙂

For this issue, we take my project edivad-suite as the project you would like to contribute.

The main configuration of the SVN plugin should work, however if you would like to change your settings, you coudl do it by the Window->Preferences->Team->SVN (for example the SVN Connector)..

For starting contributing you will have to do a check out (in SVN slang) of the project. To do so in eclipse, you will have to select File->New->Project->Project From SVN [step 1]. In the form that appear, specify the url and user/pass if needed and proceed with next [step 2].

If it appear an error (for example after clicking the browse buttont) that it’s not possible to access the repository, maybe you could be behind a proxy that need authentication. You have to store credential informations in the eclipse networt settings (Window->Preferences->General->Network Connection), since the SNV plugin wont ask you for it.

Then in the next screen, using the browse button, selecte the resource needed (in this example the leaf in trunk) and with the finish button start download the sources [step 3, step 4].

After a bit of thinking eclipse will prompt you something how to download the project. Sice we are starting a new one, let’s use the default provided. Here you can change for example the project name that will be created in your workbench [step 5]. Use the next to proceed.

Here you can specify (if needed) a different location of the sources outside the workspace [step 6]. Use the finish to end the process.

Now everything should be done and you should have your project ready for contributing.

I’ve found a little fault (?). If I try to create (download) the project on a FAT filesystem (my usb pendrive), the whole process ask me for some file for authenticating via SSL. Maybe something fail to write something else, I don’t know. The fastest workaround I’ve found is to download the project in the normal workspace (that on work is on C:\… and is a NTFS) . Then copy the directory project into the pendrive, remove the project (via eclipse) from the workspace (deleting content on FS) and then import an existing project into workspace that points to the pendrive.